By Jeanne M. Truglio & Owen C. Dewitt
Assistant Criminal District Attorneys in Tarrant County
Five seconds before fatally colliding his 2013 Chevy Silverado into the driver’s side door of a turning Nissan Versa, Nelson Ramirez pushed his truck to the limits of its capabilities, accelerating from 81 miles per hour to 93. The moment that impact occurred, Ramirez had pushed the accelerator down 99 percent of the way.
Ramirez had clocked out from his job at AutoZone around 9:00 p.m. that night, and he and his friend Milton Carranza pulled out of the parking lot in their respective trucks. A quarter mile down the road, while both were stopped at a red light, Milton began to rev his engine as he sat next to Ramirez. When the light turned green, the race was on, and both trucks leapt forward.
Only moments later, two people were dead and a third gravely injured.
Less than a mile separated the AutoZone and Griff’s Hamburgers, which is where Ramirez collided with the Nissan containing Cindy Griffin, Madison Lake, and Bishop Kline. It was a clear night in Fort Worth on November 30, 2022, and that mile was a long, straight, and relatively quiet stretch of River Oaks Boulevard. Cindy had just driven her boyfriend’s daughter, Madison, to pick up Madison’s boyfriend, Bishop, as he got off work at Griff’s. Blurry surveillance video from the restaurant shows Bishop getting into the backseat of Cindy’s car at 9:11 p.m. Twenty-two seconds later, that same surveillance captured the last moments of their lives as Ramirez crashed into their car. Cindy and Madison were killed instantly from blunt force trauma, while Bishop lay in a coma after sustaining severe brain damage. Ultimately, he underwent multiple surgeries that proved unsuccessful, and he died six weeks after the crash.
Twenty-two seconds may not seem like a long time, but in less than half of one minute, the lives of scores of people would change forever. In 22 seconds, Nelson Ramirez, a 19-year-old who had never been arrested before, committed six felonies. In 22 seconds, three families found themselves in the agonizing position of having to bury a loved one far too soon. And in those 22 seconds, we prosecutors had to figure out what justice looked like for a young, probation-eligible defendant responsible for killing three completely innocent victims.
Two difficult hurdles
This was not a whodunnit—Ramirez’s guilt was never truly at issue, despite his initial attempts to lie to responding officers about the circumstances surrounding his crash. The immediate challenge was not how to prove him guilty but how to punish him for what he had done. While it was clear that Ramirez did not intend to kill Cindy, Madison, and Bishop, his actions had horrific consequences. Understanding the reality of that situation, Ramirez eventually pled guilty to manslaughter and asked the judge to assess punishment following a pre-sentence investigation (PSI) report. (We had extended a plea offer that would’ve required prison time, but he refused.) With his guilty plea handled, we prepared for a difficult sentencing hearing.
We had two big challenges to overcome to resolve this case in a just manner. First, the defendant’s age, lack of criminal history, and good behavior on bond. Second, and more importantly, negotiating and managing the expectations of three separate families who were all grieving unexpected loss.
A sympathetic defendant. When we received the PSI report, we knew we had an uphill battle if we wanted Ramirez to be sentenced to prison. While we already knew he had never been arrested before, the PSI report detailed how Ramirez had a strong support system through his family, was working full time, and had enrolled in welding classes at Tarrant County Community College after graduating from high school. He was engaged to be married and was hoping to start a family soon. Ramirez was tested for drugs and alcohol frequently as a condition of his bond and passed each time.
The Texas Risk Assessment System—Community Supervision Tool deemed Nelson’s overall risk of recidivism as “low,” with men scoring in his range having a recidivism rate of only 11 percent. There was nothing listed under the “high risk” category of his evaluation. At the end of the report, the supervision officer listed seven factors in favor of Ramirez receiving probation and only one factor against.
Perhaps most helpful to our argument that Ramirez deserved to be in prison were his own statements. While he did express remorse, he also resisted the notion that he had actually been racing. Ramirez stated in the PSI report that he hadn’t realized that what he had done was “considered” racing until his lawyer showed him the statute. Per §545.420(b)(2) of the Texas Transportation Code, what Nelson did that night met the statutory definition of racing as “the use of one or more vehicles in an attempt to: (A) outgain or outdistance another vehicle or prevent another from passing.” It admittedly wasn’t much, but it gave us some minimization that we could show the judge that Ramirez was not taking complete responsibility for his actions.
Managing three grieving families. More difficult than handling a sympathetic defendant was managing the expectations of the families. Understandably, the consensus among them was that they expected Ramirez to serve the rest of his life in prison for taking the lives of their loved ones. With the statute providing for a maximum of 20 years in prison and the possibility of probation, though, conversations with the families were difficult. As prosecutors, we have these types of hard conversations frequently. We lay out the strengths and weaknesses of our cases, the expected and possible results, and what the defendant will or won’t plead to. Oftentimes we have to prepare victims and their families for outcomes that may not make any sense to someone outside the criminal justice system.
In this case, given what we had before us, we had to prepare these families for the likelihood that Ramirez would receive a lengthy probated sentence. We started with phone calls to one of the parents of each victim. There were many family and friends justifiably invested in the outcome of this case, but trying to relay the same message to dozens of people would have been inefficient and potentially confusing, so we focused on one member of each family and trusted them to pass the messages further down the line. Doing so lowered the risk of crossing wires and assigned one point of contact for each victim’s family and our office.
The first calls made to Don (Cindy’s father), Keith (Madison’s father), and Sue (Bishop’s mother), went smoothly enough. We introduced ourselves, expressed our condolences, and updated them on the status of the case as plea negotiations began. It cannot be stressed enough that setting expectations with families is paramount in that first contact. The easy thing would be to tell grieving families that you not only share their anger at what happened, but also that you’ll put this defendant in prison for as long as humanly possible. The more difficult path is the line between empathizing with their pain and preparing them for the disappointment and anger they may feel if the defendant gets probation.
When we first told Don that probation was not just a possibility but a probability, he told us, “It was like he aimed a gun and fired a 4,600-pound bullet at my daughter.” He wasn’t wrong for feeling this way. There isn’t anything we prosecutors can do to take away all the pain that the families feel. When Ramirez decided to race his friend down River Oaks Boulevard that night, the outcome would have been the same either way. The distinction that Ramirez did not intend to kill his victims was largely irrelevant as we endured a long and understandably angry conversation. “How can he take the lives of my son and two others and be able to walk free on probation?” Sue asked. Again, she wasn’t wrong for feeling that way, and explaining the difficulties that came with a decade of probation would do little to ease that pain.
We promised to give Don, Keith, and Sue every opportunity to fully express their grief for the judge and in front of Ramirez when we called them to testify. We also promised that, despite the likelihood of probation, we would argue for the maximum of 20 years in prison. They never stopped wanting guarantees that we couldn’t give them, but it went a long way to assure them that we were truly fighting to see justice done for Cindy, Madison, and Bishop.
The punishment hearing
The day of the hearing came, and the courtroom was filled with friends and family for both sides. Don took the stand first to talk about how Cindy was not just his only daughter, but his caregiver as well after he had lost his wife a few years prior. He was always the quickest to anger in our meetings, so we were slightly worried that Don would act out once he found himself sitting feet away from the man who killed his daughter, but he was measured in his delivery and appropriately restrained in his call for the judge to sentence Ramirez to the maximum possible sentence. Sue went next and described in horrifying detail what she felt as she spent weeks watching her son endure surgery after surgery before ultimately succumbing to his injuries.
We put Keith on the stand last. Keith had not only lost a partner in Cindy, but he had also lost a teenage daughter in Madison. He tied Don and Sue’s losses together and highlighted just how many lives were affected by Ramirez’s actions. Keith had always been the calmest and most reserved in our meetings. Despite the obvious pain he was feeling, he never let it show. But on the stand, knowing we were approaching the end of this process, he changed. Keith became openly emotional for the first time recalling how he had hoped to marry Cindy and how much life Madison should have had in front of her.
All the files in our case were opened to the pre-sentence investigator to write the report, so he saw the report from the State’s crash analyst, who reported speeds, road conditions, etc. At the hearing, the video of the crash was played for the judge.
(A note about Ramirez’s friend, Milton, the one against whom he was racing: At the time of the crash, he was a juvenile, and his case was handled in the juvenile system. After Ramirez plead guilty, Milton’s case was “dismissed”—before it was ever even formally filed. He was 15 at the time of the offense.)
As we rested, we weren’t sure that it would be enough to convince Judge Elizabeth Beach to choose prison over probation, but we knew we had advanced our cause.
Next, it was defense’s turn. We knew Ramirez’s goal while testifying would be to show sufficient remorse, empathize with the victims’ families, and fully take responsibility for his decision to race that night. When Ramirez testified, he accomplished that. It wasn’t until his mother and his preacher testified that we knew prison may be a real possibility.
Both Ramirez’s mother and preacher decided to lay at least partial blame for the crash on Cindy. Cindy’s autopsy revealed she had low levels of THC (Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, which is found in cannabis) in her blood. With the Ramirez’s speed and Cindy being mid-turn when he hit her, there was not anything that she could have done to prevent that collision, but Ramirez’s witnesses repeatedly and emphatically declared that Ramirez wasn’t the only one who had committed a crime that night. It was a questionable defensive strategy to say the least.
After both sides closed and argued, Ramirez stood up and braced for the judge’s sentence. Despite his youth, his performance on bond, his family’s support, and even the recommendation of the adult supervision officer, Judge Beach determined that justice required Ramirez to serve 10 years in prison.
While we were surprised, the families of Cindy, Madison, and Bishop were elated. It wasn’t the maximum sentence, but 10 years in prison was better than Ramirez leaving the courtroom that day on probation. It was only by preparing them for the worst that we could celebrate the outcome we received in that hearing.
Street racing
This year there have been 66 racing-related offenses filed with our office. Illegal street racing is on the rise and each one of those 66 cases carries with it the potential to end up like Ramirez’s case, with the lives of innocent people lost by the selfish actions of reckless drivers. Illegal street racing has become such a problem in Tarrant County specifically that in 2023, Governor Greg Abbott chose to sign two bills targeting the offense into law here in Fort Worth. Even as we wrote this article, another street racing case claimed the lives of four family members, including two children, in neighboring Dallas County.
This underscores the frequency and magnitude of this issue in the Dallas–Fort Worth area and the importance of both investigating and prosecuting these cases. It’s easy to dismiss them as nothing more than kids having fun and making dumb choices, but even the races that end without anyone getting hurt deserve our utmost attention. Without the hard work that Detective Steven Nance and the officers of the River Oaks Police Department put into the investigation, we could not have secured even that initial guilty plea from this defendant. These are challenging cases that require careful, prompt, and detailed investigations. It would have been easy for River Oaks PD to treat this crash as nothing more than a tragic accident, but by putting in the work and treating it as seriously as the manslaughter it was, officers helped us to reach the most just outcome possible.
If we hope to avoid having conversations like the ones we had with Don, Keith, and Sue, then we must ensure that our communities understand how seriously we take these crimes. This was a challenging case and we had to have tough conversations, but in the end, we helped ensure that justice was done. The outcome won’t take away the grief of these victims’ families or bring back their loved ones, but we hope it will give them a measure of closure and peace knowing that the man who killed Cindy, Madison, and Bishop will spend a significant amount of the next decade in prison.